We've got one of the highest grossing movies of all time, a film that coined a subgenre, a pair of action classics, and two controversial flicks, one of which features the nude debut of one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history! All this and more came to life on July 15 in Movie Nudity History!
2005: Wedding Crashers
One of the most successful comedies of all time, this summer smash turns 15 today, which is also pretty much the perfect age to see this movie for the first time. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play professional wedding crashers whose fortunes take a turn when they crash the wedding of the daughter of Senator Cleary (Christopher Walken). The Senator's other daughters, played by Isla Fisher and Rachel McAdams, eventually find their respective happiness with Vaughn and Wilson, but it's quite a bumpy road to get there. Also look out for a young Bradley Cooper as McAdams' total POS fiancé.
Within the film's first ten minutes, we get a magnificent montage of the guys crashing multiple weddings and hooking up with multiple topless beauties like Tanaya Nicole,Naureen Zaim, Rachel Sterling, and all-time stackedsensation Diora Baird!
Isla Fisher used a body double for her nude scene when she surprises Vaughn in bed in the middle of the night and Wilson's hands block us from seeing Jane Seymour's rack. Come to think of it, we also never find out if they were built for speed or built for comfort...
Wedding Crashers was the fifth highest grossing film of 2005and still ranks as one of the top 20 highest grossing R-rated films. It helped revive the big budget R-rated studio comedy, for better or worse, and also helped establish two hours as the new standard running time for comedies.
2005: Happy Endings
The film thatinspired the term Hyperlink Cinema was covered in our Staff Picks column, which is where portions of the following text come from, also turns 15 today...
WriterAlissa Quart may not have been the first to notice the trend incertain filmswhere the lives of many disparate characters end up intersecting in unexpected ways, but she was the first to give it a name that stuck.Writing for Film Comment in 2005about Don Roos' character-based dramedyHappy Endings, Quart coined the term Hyperlink Cinema to describe the phenomenon. Usually it's applied in the micro sense in that it often applies to one film and one group of characters, but in the macro sense, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Hyperlink Cinema on the grandest scale imaginable.
Fifteen years on, Quart's dream of Hyperlink Cinema being "the new Hollywood we've been dreaming of" hasn't really come to fruition. The genre had stagnated in the aughts and nowhere was that more apparent than in Don Roos' third feature—his first following the disastrous big budget romcomBouncewithGwyneth Paltrowand Ben Affleck—and his second in the Hyperlink genre after1998'sThe Opposite of Sex.
Unlike that flick, which was more interested in how a young firecracker like Christina Ricci could disrupt the lives of people who thought they had it together, this film deals with thirty and forty-somethings searching for the titular fulfillment. Often its divorced of its sexual meaning, butLisa Kudrowdoes visit a massage parlor at one point, though she utilized body doubleAnna Shemeikkafor the brief flash of breast...
Maggie GyllenhaalandTamara Daviesare there to save the day, however, going topless without the aid of any doubles...
Roos' career hasn't slowed down, he's just grown beyond Hyperlink Cinema for now and moved over to Hyperlink Television as a writer onThis is Us. That's fitting place for him to land as that is the future of Hyperlink Cinema Quart seemed to envision, it just moved over to television where the serialized nature allows more time for people to become emotionally involved and invested in the characters.
1994: Spanking the Monkey
Director David O. Russell has courted controversy his entire career, starting with his very first feature which flirts with the notion of an adult man wrestling witha sexual attraction to his own mother. Jeremy Davies plays acollege sophomore who gives up an internship totake care of his incapacitated mother (the late Alberta Watson) for the summer while his father is away on business. He balances feelings of guilt with pent up sexual frustration, exacerbated by the fact that he sees his mother naked while helping her shower...
He attempts to get something going with a local high school girl (Clara Gallo) but mom's jealousy drives her to throw the girl out of the house upon catching them together...
Dad's also got his own priorities, as proven by the fully nude presence of Liberty Jean in his hotel room...
The film does follow through on their promise of mom loving, however, in the climax whenmom and son passionately make out before he attempts to strangle her...
Yeah, it's a weird one, even for the guy who made I Heart Huckabees andAmerican Hustle.
1994: True Lies
Okay, you've got us on a technicality here and there is no nudity in this Arnold Schwarzenegger/James Cameron rip-roaring good time of a movie also released on this day 26 years ago. However, Jamie Lee Curtis' housewife striptease remains one of the sexiest non-nude scenes in cinema history...
1988: Die Hard
It may be set at Christmas-time and people may desperately want it to be a Christmas movie—and it sure can be—it was obviously never the intention of the studio to market Die Hard as a Christmas movie as it was released on this day 32 years ago! Then again, Christmas in July is a thing, so let's just say that everyone's argument is valid on this one.
There's also no arguing that it's nice to see Cheryl Baker's topless sex scene in the flick, even though it has a less-than-happy ending...
1970: Joe
Finally, on this day 50 years ago, Mr. Skin Hall of Famer Susan Sarandon made her nude debut in this hot button film that still packs a wallop all these years later. The late Peter Boyle playsthe titular beer swilling factory worker who hates hippies along with just about everyone who is different from him. This makes her the perfect target of his wrath as she plays a junkie whose father kills her boyfriend, sending her out into the streets. Joe then teams up with her father to track her down, taking out a lot of "trash" along the way.
Not only does 24-year old Susan go fantastically full frontal at age 24 just two minutes into the flick, there's also more nudity along the way fromFrancine Middleton,Patty Caton, andMax Couperplaying strippers, the latter of whom gets smacked around by Boyle...
